Prisons and radicalization in France

To make
prisons less of a locus for radicalization, what is needed is more Muslim ministers,
less overcrowding, more wardens and more respect for the legitimate claims of Muslims.

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two terrorist attacks that caused 17 deaths among the French people were the
results of a radicalization that bears four main features. The people who
perpetrated them were from the French poor suburbs, the so-called banlieues,
where there is a concentration of populations mostly of North African origins,
with a higher rate of joblessness and criminality, and a deeply antagonistic
attitude of its male youth towards the rest of the society.

Many
spend part of their youth in the prisons and those who become Jihadists are
"born again" Muslims with no previous Islamic culture, having gone
through a deep up rootedness in terms of their cultural identity before being
attracted towards Radical Islam by a guru, through Internet or the influence of
their buddies.

Last
but not least, once radicalized, they need to make the initiatory trip to the
Muslim countries where Jihad is paramount: Afghanistan and Pakistan (the case
of Mohamed Merah who killed seven people in March 2012, three Muslim military
and 4 Jews), Syria (Mehdi Nemmouch who killed on May 24, 2014 four people in
the Jewish Museum of Brussels), Yemen (Cherif Kouachi who killed 12 people in
Charlie Hebdo attacks on January 7, 2015 with his brother), Iraq. The trip
confirms the Jihadist in his identity and his rupture with the European society
where he has been raised and educated. Sometimes the meeting of a charismatic
person like Jamel Beghal serves the same function, as in the case of Coulibaly
who killed a female policeman and four Jews on 8 and 9 January 2015.

For
the disaffected youth of the poor suburbs, their stay in prison serves them
first as a rite of passage to adulthood. Some are proud to be jailed and once
out, they claim legitimacy due to their stay in prison. They build up ties with
more seasoned criminals of the same origin and in the large prisons close to
the cities; they find people from the surrounding banlieues.

Muslims
in France are around 8% of the population but in prison, their number is
somewhere around half of the inmates. In the large short-term prisons (maisons d'arrêt), their rate is even
higher and in my interviews many "White people" (Frenchmen of
European origin) claimed that they did not feel at home in those jails, mostly
populated by the "Arabs" (Frenchmen of North African roots).

Short
term prisons are in a dire situation: overpopulated and understaffed, in most
cells of some 9 square meters there are two and sometimes three prisoners, one
prison guard supervising some 100 inmates (in the long term prisons, ‘Maisons
centrales’, one guard is in charge of around 30 inmates). Surveillance is at
best sketchy if the prisoner does not show external signs of Fundamentalism
like the long beard, a proselytizing attitude, an aggressive behavior towards
the guards, and disrespect towards the official Muslim minister.

Radicalized
inmates have learned to avoid those pitfalls: they do not even go to the
collective Friday prayers where they exist, they do not make any ostentatious
attempt at proselytizing and usually tone down their antagonism towards the
guards in order not to attract their attention.

Prisons
in France and in many parts of Europe have become in part a substitute for mental
hospitals. Since closing the latter in the 1970s, many of those who should find
their place there are locked up in prisons: up to a third of the prison inmates
have psychological problems, around 10% having serious mental illnesses. Some
of them fall prey to radicalization by those who seek accomplices who can be
manipulated, once outside prison. Psychopaths can assume an active role in
radicalization as well, and in some cases in my field research I witnessed how
they pushed towards radicalization those fragile inmates who were under their
spell.

Many
of the Jihadists in France have had family and mental problems. Merah was
declared psychologically fragile by the prison psychologist, violence among the
members of his family being chronic. The Kouachi brothers were raised in a
social care institution as well as Mehdi Nemmouche who spent some time there
before joining his grandmother.

Prisons
are not fearsome to them. There, their hatred of society becomes entrenched in
their soul.

Guards
constantly complain about their aggression, their lack of elementary social
manners and a habit of being in a constant tug of war. Prison is where they
discover their irrevocable fate as recidivists, devoid of the fears of other
prisoners. Hate (la haine) becomes
the keyword describing their attitude towards society. They feel victimized and
believe that all the normal doors for social promotion are closed to them. They
take upon themselves their destiny as indefinitely relapsing into crimes and
living part of their life locked up behind bars, once out starting anew their
deviant activities.

Radical
Islamization is mostly the transfer of their hatred into the spiritual realm of
the sacred sphere they call Islam. Usually, they lack the elementary notions of
Islam, do not know how to perform daily prayers, their preference going towards
those aspects of Allah's religion that are related to the holy war. It is usually after radicalization in prison
that they endeavor to amend their flimsy knowledge of Islam, spending long periods
reading the standard biography of the Prophet translated into French and the
Koran in French. Very few push their motivation up to the level of learning the
Arabic language, with the help of some other inmates.

Converts
are in particular overzealous in this matter, showing off their faith to the
others and surpassing the "Arabs" in the knowledge of the holy verses
they learn by heart and quote in order to awe people and push them towards
Jihad. Prison becomes a place where novice jihadists compete with each other
and joust to prove their knowledge of the Word of God, quoting in Arabic verses
and giving their view on Jihad in a magisterial manner. Since there is a dire
scarcity of Muslim ministers (some 160 whereas at least three times more is
needed), these self-proclaimed "ulama" become reference points for
other prisoners who ask for religious guidance in a setting where despair
pushes them towards religion.

Islam
is the more attractive as the religion of the oppressed: it has an anti-imperialist
side (anti-American, anti-western), a capacity to say what is forbidden and
allowed (haram versus halal), whereas Christianity has lost the
aptitude to give them details of what they should eat, how to wash themselves,
how to organize their sexual life and how to relate to the others.

These
young generations are looking for moral principles that vindicate their
opposition to society and Jihadist Islam fulfills that role perfectly. It is
more than sheer heroism, it is a way of life that brings meaning to their split
identity and provides them with a sacred goal, flattering their narcissism at
the same time by giving them concrete ideals to imitate that will make them
celebrities: Merah had become an icon in prison during my research in
2011-2013. The Kouachi brothers are going to replace them in the same manner as
Merah replaced Khaled Kelkal in the memory of the up and coming generations--Kelkal
who killed 8 people in the Parisian metro at Saint Michel in 1995, having
become had an idol for them as I witnessed in my empirical research in 2000-2003.

Jihadism
exchanges a feeling of being despised for that of being feared, giving a last
chance before death to take revenge against those who show them contempt. From
the inferior predicament of the condemned, the young man becomes the omnipotent
judge who condemns to death the others and finds solace in that destructive
feeling.

To
make prisons less of a locus for radicalization one needs more Muslim
ministers, less overcrowding, more wardens and more respect for the legitimate
claims of the Muslims (in many prisons there is no collective Friday prayers
for lack of Muslim ministers). But beyond that, job opportunities are needed in
order to give a sense of concrete citizenship to this generation that feels in
the way, useless and reviled.

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How to cite:Khosrokhavar F. (2015) «Prisons and radicalization in France», Open Democracy / ISA RC-47: Open Movements, 19 March. https://opendemocracy.net/farhad-khosrokhavar/prisons-and-radicalization-in-france

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